Physical Damage despite Immunities

[Magnate]

Is it worth it defining different multipliers for the different attack types to calculate physical damage. Something like.

• Hit: 1
  Touch: 0
  Bite: 0.8
  Claw: 0.8

etc.

Or is it sufficient to make touch 0 and everything else 1, and go ahead with some slight rebalancing if needed?

That depends whether you want a quick fix or a proper rewrite of monster melee. The latter has been on my mind for a long time (make_attack_normal is still the longest non-borg function in the code by several hundred lines), but it's never reached the top of the list.

I would create a list-mon-melee.h along the lines of list-mon-spells.h so that we define for each attack type the percentage of each element in the attack (no reason you can't have more than two e.g. plasma could be 20% physical, 40% fire 40% lightning), along with the side effects/procs flowing from each attack type, message text, percentage preference etc. Then you can simplify the code right down to iterate over the available attacks.

But for 3.4 I'd just implement bron's fix for hit-to-burn and the other currently purely elemental attack types, ignoring the touch attacks of jellies (and whoever).

[bron]

Dang. There's a typo in the proposed fix. In the do_elemental_melee_attack routine I have:

    if (elemental_dam > 0) inven_damage(p, GF_ACID, MIN(elemental_dam * 5, 300));

when clearly this should be

    if (elemental_dam > 0) inven_damage(p, which_element, MIN(elemental_dam * 5, 300));

[debo]

Dang. There's a typo in the proposed fix. In the do_elemental_melee_attack routine I have:

    if (elemental_dam > 0) inven_damage(p, GF_ACID, MIN(elemental_dam * 5, 300));

when clearly this should be

    if (elemental_dam > 0) inven_damage(p, which_element, MIN(elemental_dam * 5, 300));

"The fire hound breathes fire!"
"Your Iron Helm is damaged!"

[PowerWyrm]

If he breathes for long enough, even an iron helm should melt no?

[Timo Pietilä]

If he breathes for long enough, even an iron helm should melt no?

If the heat is enough to melt iron, you are very much toast.

[fizzix]

So I've finally gotten around to implementing this (in v4 first as per Magnate's suggestion.)

I split the implementation into 3 separate commits. The first commit is essentially all the changes in the melee2.c that bron posted (fixing the GF_ACID/which_element error). I tested it out and it seems to work properly.

The second commit makes certain attacks not deal any physical damage when they are elemental.

/* Some attacks do no physical damage */
	if (method == RBM_TOUCH  ||
		method == RBM_ENGULF ||
		method == RBM_DROOL  ||
		method == RBM_SPIT   ||
		method == RBM_CRAWL  ||
		method == RBM_GAZE   ||
		method == RBM_WAIL   ||
		method == RBM_SPORE  ||
		method == RBM_BEG    ||
		method == RBM_INSULT ||
		method == RBM_MOAN){
		physical_dam = 0;
	}

I'm pretty sure the only ones I really needed were touch, engulf, and spore, but I included the others for completeness. After all someone *might* want to introduce a monster that begs to burn.

The third commit gives the player an AC bonus of 50 for the purpose of calculating the physical damage (only for elemental attacks). The bonus of 50 should give roughly a 1/8 reduction in damage, which isn't really all that much. I wasn't sure about the usefulness of this one, it felt right though. That's why I sequestered it into it's own commit.

[jujuben]

Insult to burn could be fun...

[fizzix]

Insult to burn could be fun...

Boldor the yeek moons you!
You have received a sick burn!
You drink the pint of ale
You are no longer aware that all the yeeks are laughing at you.